The present invention relates to process equipment for a semiconductor device, and particularly to process equipment for a semiconductor device in which a plurality of different process chambers are connected to each other, a method of processing a semiconductor device using said process equipment, and a semiconductor device processed by the method.
Through process equipment for a semiconductor device has been proposed, for example in Japanese Pat. Laid-Open No. HEI 4-63414, wherein a plurality of process chambers for carrying out process steps such as cleaning, film formation, etching, and latent-image exposure are connected to each other around a buffer chamber having means for holding/carrying wafers, whereby each wafer can be carried between the process chambers without exposure to the atmospheric air, thus preventing the surface of the wafer from being contaminated and thereby improving the performance of the obtained semiconductor device. On the other hand, as process equipment for a semiconductor device in which a pattern is formed on a local region of the surface of a wafer while the local region is kept under vacuum, Japanese Pat. Laid-Open No. SHO 59-88819 has disclosed process equipment in which a pattern is formed on a local region of the surface of a wafer held in the atmospheric air while the local region is evacuated by a differential exhaust means.
In the above-described through process equipment having a plurality of the process chambers, each process chamber is partitioned from the buffer chamber by way of a gate valve, and for each carrying of a wafer, an atmospheric pressure of each process chamber is adjusted to be almost equal to that of the buffer chamber, after which the gate valve between both the chambers is opened/closed. This equipment, therefore, has a disadvantage that it takes a lot of time to carry a wafer between the process chambers, resulting in the reduced throughput. In the above-described semiconductor process equipment for forming a pattern on a local region of a wafer while keeping the local region under vacuum, there occurs a disadvantage that, since the region already processed is exposed directly after being processed, the surface of the wafer is eventually oxidized, or contaminated by unnecessary atoms and molecules, thereby reducing the yield in the case of producing high quality semiconductor devices.